1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a thermal transfer sheet used in a thermal transfer printer using heating means of a thermal head, more particularly, to an image displaying medium having an on-demand metallic color having a high luminance and a high brightness, and a thermal transfer sheet from which the image displaying medium can be simply obtained.
2) Description of the Related Art
Previously, non-impact printing has been outputting letters, symbols and photographic images on a plain paper or a recording sheet having a plastic substrate by electrophotographic copying, ink jet recording, thermal transfer recording such as melting transfer recording and sublimation transfer recording, heat sensitive developing recording or the like, and has been widely used as a hard copy. In addition, as a method of obtaining a printed product having the metal luster, a screen printing method using an ink containing a metal pigment, a putting leaf method using a metal transfer foil, a thermal transfer system using a thermal head with a metal-deposited ribbon and the like are practically used. Inter alia, as a method for preparing an on-demand metallic colored printed product, a thermal transfer system is excellent, and a variety of applications are being deployed.
However, in order to obtain a printed product having a metallic color image having a high luminance and a high brightness, matching of the surface property of a transfer receiving material, a substrate, a printing method, a printing condition, a layer structure of a thermal transfer sheet and the like is necessary and, depending on a combination thereof, a luminance is lowered, a printed product looks dark depending on visual angle and, thus there is a problem that appearance of design is not necessarily satisfied.